The once settled question of whether and how America should provide military support for democratically elected governments in western Europe is highlighted in today’s #stampoftheday, a 3-cent stamp issued in 1952 celebrating NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization). The treaty establishing NATO, which was the first peacetime military alliance the United States entered into outside […]

Today is one of those days when the #stampoftheday provides an uncanny connection to current events. The stamp is a 22-cent stamp from 1942 picturing Grover Cleveland, the only man to serve two non-consecutive terms as president from 1884-1888 and 1892-1896. The connection to current events is that in July 1894, Cleveland, against the wishes

The Seneca Falls Convention, an historic gathering that produced one of the most important documents in the long fight for women’s rights, is the focus of today’s #stampoftheday, a 3-cent stamp celebrating “100 Years of Progress of Women” issued on July 19, 1948, the 100th anniversary of that 2-day gathering in western New York State.

John Bell Hood, the Confederate general who is the namesake of the most populous U.S. military base in the world (and who apparently wasn’t much of the general) is the focus for today’s #stampoftheday. Hood isn’t on the stamp itself, which is an 8-cent stamp, issued in 1893, picturing General William Tecumsah Sherman, the Union

“Search for peace,” a good message at any time, seems particularly important in this troubled summer. So it’s nice that today’s #stampoftheday is a 5-cent “Search for Peace” stamp issued on July 5, 1967. Although the stamp was issued at the height of the Vietnam War (and increasing protests against that war), it wasn’t a

Seeing a fair number of American flags, several Trump/Pence signs (but no Susan Collins signs) and an occasional Black Live Matter placard as we meandered home from mid-coast Maine today, made me choose a 1957 4-cent American flag stamp as today’s #stampoftheday. (It won out over a 1956 stamp featuring Independence Hall and 1950 stamp

With the calendar turning to July, it seems appropriate that today’s #stampoftheday honors school teachers (and other educators), who hopefully are getting a well-deserved break after an especially tumultuous spring and what is likely to be a very challenging fall. Of course, none of what it means to be a teacher today was envisioned when

The radical idea that the federal government can and does use science and facts to address potentially fatal threats to people’s health is the message sent by today’s #stampoftheday, which also reminds us about the powers likely to resist this approach. The stamp itself is a 3-cent stamp issued on June 27, 1956 to commemorate

The St. Lawrence Seaway, a famous transport project that didn’t produce expected economic benefits and created unexpected environmental problems, is the subject of today’s #stampoftheday. The stamp, is a 4-cent stamp, jointly issued with a similar Canadian stamp, on June 26, 1959, the day that Queen Elizabeth II and President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally opened

The ongoing importance of immigration is a timely message conveyed by today’s #stampoftheday, which, oddly enough, comes one day after the president’s most recent anti-immigrant action. (If you missed it, yesterday he issued an executive order that blocks the entry of many foreign workers, expands an April executive order denying green cards to applicants in